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Chapter 2: The Electrician
Cyrice Venkle hung upside down by her three point harness, under her was nothing but darkness, the ancient elevator shaft going at least four hundred down. There was almost no sound down here, her team members were three hundred feet above her, the only way she could contact them was by the small two way telephone in her harness. Radios didn’t work in the citadel, too much metal, so all communication had to be done with hardwired connections. She was the electrical specialist of the survey team, with a very, long, less than pleasant career. Fixing sandships was hard enough, since those things could take decades to make, so the electrical systems varied from deck to deck. Of course with sandships at least she knew the general idea behind it, and could normally figure out what era the systems had been installed, from there it was easy enough to find the issue. Pre-fall structures were a completely different animal, because different structures had different power setups, different eras would have radically different technology, and all of them had different current requirements. The Citadel was by far the worst. Not only was most of the wiring hidden behind seamless metal walls, the places where the wiring was exposed were in the most inconvenient places possible. Like an elevator shaft half a mile underground. She shined her headlamp on the access panel and smiled. At least this one had bolts and wasn’t welded in place. She grabbed her wrench and pulled it from her toolbelt, it slipped from her fingers, the retention cord preventing it from vanishing into the void, but did cause it to smack her in the face. She began unbolting the panel, dropping each bolt into a large bag that hung below her, the panel went in the bag as well. There was a pair of very large bore wires, almost as thick as her thumb. “I think I may have found an artery.” Cyrice said into the mouthpiece of her telephone. “What? Are you sure? Or is it just a bundle for the control wires for the elevator?” Came the reply. ' ' “I'm sure. They are both solid, like that one we found back at the Zes-Tor dig, just a lot bigger.” ' ' “Okay, you want to try flashing it?” ' ' “Yes.” She slowly scrapped off the powder that covered the wires, it was some sort of insulation for the wires, disintegrated by the slow march of time. “We are ready up here” Came the voice from the telephone. “Got it.” She slowly wrapped the electrodes on a special battery around the bare metal on the wires. “Turning it on in five… Four…. Three… Two… One.” She flicked the switch on the battery, turning it on. Flashing was a relatively simple but risky method of mapping electrical systems, a large battery would be hooked to the wires and other members of the survey crew would attach sensors to other parts of the system, the battery would be turned on, and hopefully the sensors would pick it up. It wasn’t perfect in the least, since it didn’t really tell anyone what the wires did, only that they were connected. It could also set off things like traps, or destroy delicate electronics. This deep in the citadel there was very little risk for traps, and on a wires this large there wasn’t risk of burning anything out. The battery suddenly got very hot, the charge guage snapping from full to empty so quickly Cyrice didn’t even see the needle move. “Why didn’t you use the full power? We barely got anything up here!” The survey leader asked. “I did. The battery is empty. Never seen one dry out that quick.” “Oh. In that case we are pulling you out of there. Something sucked up all that power, no telling what might happen next. ' ' “In four years studying The Citadel we have advanced more than we did in twenty years studying the pre-fall ruins. And we haven’t even found out how to turn the lights on or mapped the entirety. What wonders still lie undisturbed deep in the vaults below? What knowledge has yet to be translated in the libraries? ' ' Adrin Lown Vice Admiral of the second fleet.”